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long winded logs


Shawnonabike

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So now, when writing my logs, I need to consider not only that some unknown person might want to read it for some unknown reason, I have to think about what unknown device they might use too?

 

OK, I get it now. You are purposely misunderstanding the issue for some reason that escapes me. Probably to get some form of Forum Jollies.

 

No, no, not at all. I went back and re-read what you wrote and it still seems to say what I thought it was saying - in fact for efficiency let's bring it back here:

 

You do not seem to understand the problem. My GPS has limited memory available for cache listings and logs. Long cut and paste logs eat up that space and often useful logs are cut off by the useless ones.

 

So you are saying that people need to avoid writing long logs which aren't useful - to you, presumably, as you're referring to your GPS and instead write short useful logs or, at the very least, short logs which don't cut useful logs on your GPS.

 

Whatever. I'm not going to waste my time.

 

BTW, here is a log I came across yesterday that exemplifies what I am talking about:

 

I woke up this morning to go after a few geocaches to keep my daily streak alive and I had to get at least 5 geocaches today to keep my new years resolution alive. My New Years resolution is to get at least 5 geocaches a day in 2015. I also needed to get a geocache today to keep my daily streak alive. My daily streak is now up to 69 days. This was my 2nd geocache out of 5 geocaches found today. 2/5.

 

What a nice log there! See how the finder talked about his experience finding the cache and offered hints for future finders? An inspiration to us all.

 

Well, I've been guilty of exaggerating for effect before now so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to see it here - but by crikey lad, I wouldn't like to fall into the bottom of the barrel you scraped that one up from :laughing:

 

I see though that you've added another requirement / expectation that people should be cognisant of when writing their logs - offering hints for future finders! :blink: Personally I tend toward the expectation that the CO made the cache just as easy or difficult as they wanted it to be - and set the D rating accordingly and who the heck am I to take it upon myself to change that by granting extra hints to others without the CO's permission? :ph34r:

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Obviously, you are missing the point entirely. I had a GeoArt series. (Archived them when my Geocaching partner died. They were in his area, not mine.) Most of the hides were similar. All twenty-four puzzles were different. Most easy. Some very difficult. Great views, if similar. Eight-mile hike/bike ride. Total of 112 favorite points for the twenty-four caches.

But I kept getting the same logs, over and over... And over and over.

We took a look at the cache map the night before we left for our one week vacation in XXXXXXX and we spotted a dolphin in the XXXXX. This aroused our curiosity. The first cache we took a look at was number 23. The puzzle turned out to be a Sudoku and we know how to solve those, the second one turned out to be a different kind of puzzle. There was no time to investigate further. We printed the Sudoku puzzle so we could solve it in the plane.

 

This proved to be a pleasant pastime. We solved it slow but sure and after quite some time we had nice coords on paper. This inspired us the check out the other dolphins and we managed to solve a few more on the plane. Since we also wanted to visit some caches in XXXXXXXXX, this series was a great opportunity. We decided to visit XXXXXXXXX the last day we were in town so we were able to spent some more time in the evenings on the varied puzzles.

 

On that particular day we took the public transportation to xxx and we went for what turned out to be a great hike. Although it was a bit chilly, we had a clear blue sky and a the sun was shining. The waterfront turned out to be very nice for walking and offered stunning views of New York city. We walked back after sunset so we also could also enjoy the beautiful city lights.

 

Although it was a beautiful day, the waterfront was quite deserted. We met just a few people walking their dog. This gave us the opportunity to search undisturbedly for the caches. Although due to the exact coords and the clear hint we usually found them fairly quickly.

 

All in all this series gave us a lot of fun solving the puzzles , a great day outdoors combined with sightseeing and 15 founds, a perfect combination.

 

Thank you very much for this great series and the well maintained caches. Excuses for the general log.

 

Nice log. But the same log fifteen times? And that's what we got: Mostly the same log over and over, and over and over. We spent a lot of time to make the views interesting, and the puzzles interesting and different. And people could not rehide the caches properly?

That's the best geocachers can do? Despite the effort into hiding these caches, and providing interesting puzzles, this series was ready to go.

I'm sorry that geocachers found this series so boring. I won't try that again. Archived.

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You log finds the way you want and I'll lig them the way I want.

 

If I'm out on an adventure, I'm going to write about it, even if it is a bit long winded. If I've found a number of caches on the adventure, they will get cut-and-paste logs because they are part of the same adventure. However, if there is something special about a cache that warrants an extra comment, I'll provide an extra comment. I could give a full write-up only for the first cache of the day or series, but someone who skips that one cache will miss the opportunity to read about my adventure. Of course, one who is bulk caching is unlikely to read any logs.

 

Unless it is to say the coordinates are off, my logs aren't supposed to help anyone find the cache. I'll leave it to the CO to say what needs to be said.

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Obviously, you are missing the point entirely. I had a GeoArt series. (Archived them when my Geocaching partner died. They were in his area, not mine.) Most of the hides were similar. All twenty-four puzzles were different. Most easy. Some very difficult. Great views, if similar. Eight-mile hike/bike ride. Total of 112 favorite points for the twenty-four caches.

But I kept getting the same logs, over and over... And over and over.

We took a look at the cache map the night before we left for our one week vacation in XXXXXXX and we spotted a dolphin in the XXXXX. This aroused our curiosity. The first cache we took a look at was number 23. The puzzle turned out to be a Sudoku and we know how to solve those, the second one turned out to be a different kind of puzzle. There was no time to investigate further. We printed the Sudoku puzzle so we could solve it in the plane.

 

This proved to be a pleasant pastime. We solved it slow but sure and after quite some time we had nice coords on paper. This inspired us the check out the other dolphins and we managed to solve a few more on the plane. Since we also wanted to visit some caches in XXXXXXXXX, this series was a great opportunity. We decided to visit XXXXXXXXX the last day we were in town so we were able to spent some more time in the evenings on the varied puzzles.

 

On that particular day we took the public transportation to xxx and we went for what turned out to be a great hike. Although it was a bit chilly, we had a clear blue sky and a the sun was shining. The waterfront turned out to be very nice for walking and offered stunning views of New York city. We walked back after sunset so we also could also enjoy the beautiful city lights.

 

Although it was a beautiful day, the waterfront was quite deserted. We met just a few people walking their dog. This gave us the opportunity to search undisturbedly for the caches. Although due to the exact coords and the clear hint we usually found them fairly quickly.

 

All in all this series gave us a lot of fun solving the puzzles , a great day outdoors combined with sightseeing and 15 founds, a perfect combination.

 

Thank you very much for this great series and the well maintained caches. Excuses for the general log.

 

Nice log. But the same log fifteen times? And that's what we got: Mostly the same log over and over, and over and over. We spent a lot of time to make the views interesting, and the puzzles interesting and different. And people could not rehide the caches properly?

That's the best geocachers can do? Despite the effort into hiding these caches, and providing interesting puzzles, this series was ready to go.

I'm sorry that geocachers found this series so boring. I won't try that again. Archived.

 

FWIW, I really enjoyed the five in that series that I found. I had a few more of em solved and would've liked to have made it back up the way for the rest, but couldn't find the time. Like any series though, it attracted some power cachers and we all know that with power cachers comes the "Your cache was #X in my caching adventure today" logs.

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I can see where the co is coming from. It is nice to see a log that describes what the cacher saw at the cache site. What it took to get there, what the cache site looked like and was cache still in good cond. Over all how was there experience. However if the cacher is doing or has done a lot of caches then the cut and paste method is easiest to do for them. I try to do logs that are fun to read, but sometimes there is not much to say. There is a web site out there that will give you your average log size in words. Right now I have a average size of 99 words per log. I too have had just the one word logs of "TNLNSL" because there was nothing to say about a LPC cache.

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Precisely. Who are you to decide what is a "meaningful" or "sincere" log?

 

Well, since I am a physicist, I can do it via information theory. I would say that "meaningful" == "high information density"

 

TFTC conveys one bit of information in 4 bytes, or an information density of about .25 bits/byte.

 

A long log conveys more information, but cut-and-paste logs reduce that information by the number of times they are cut-and-pasted.

 

Probably the best indicator of the information content of a log would be the Kolmogorov complexity. A cacher in my area generates long logs that would be trivial to auto-generate on a computer; my estimate is that the information content (as described by the entropy between messages) is roughly 8-12 bits per log, with log lengths that regularly exceed 500 characters. That is an information density of around .02 bits/byte, less than a tenth that of the TFTC log.

 

My own logs tend to be about 100 characters or so. Since each is unique, I will use the average information density of English, which is described to be between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character. Since many of my logs contain common information (albeit expressed differently) let's be conservative and say that I have an information content of 0.2 bits per character, or an information density approximately equal to that of the TFTC log. That still gives me about 20 bits of information per log.

 

Now let's assume that one of these cut-and-paste entries contains twice the amount of information that I would put into a log. If the logger finds 40 caches in a day, then the information content is about 1 bit per log, on a par with the TFTC log, but at a much lower density.

 

So who am I to say what is or is not meaningful? Somebody who knows math, that's who.

 

tumblr_ne2xgj19sh1rnhnqfo1_500.gif

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I do cut and paste when I had a busy day of caching but I try to add something to it at the end if there was something special about the cache or the experience involving the cache.

Why not just cut the cut&paste and stick with the something special part? If someone is having too busy a day to thank the cache owners that gave them that busy day, something is amiss.

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I do cut and paste when I had a busy day of caching but I try to add something to it at the end if there was something special about the cache or the experience involving the cache.

Why not just cut the cut&paste and stick with the something special part? If someone is having too busy a day to thank the cache owners that gave them that busy day, something is amiss.

 

You're assuming the "cut & paste" isn't expressing thanks to the cache owner.

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So is copy-paste text like this an expression of a license agreement with the user?

BY CLICKING "I AGREE", OR BY TAKING ANY STEP TO INSTALL OR USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT, YOU (1) REPRESENT THAT YOU ARE OF THE LEGAL AGE OF MAJORITY IN YOUR STATE, PROVINCE JURISDICTION OF RESIDENCE AND, IF APPLICABLE, YOU ARE DULY AUTHORIZED BY YOUR EMPLOYER TO ENTER INTO THIS CONTRACT AND (2) YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THE EULA TERMS, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT.
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Precisely. Who are you to decide what is a "meaningful" or "sincere" log?

 

Well, since I am a physicist, I can do it via information theory. I would say that "meaningful" == "high information density"

 

TFTC conveys one bit of information in 4 bytes, or an information density of about .25 bits/byte.

 

A long log conveys more information, but cut-and-paste logs reduce that information by the number of times they are cut-and-pasted.

 

Probably the best indicator of the information content of a log would be the Kolmogorov complexity. A cacher in my area generates long logs that would be trivial to auto-generate on a computer; my estimate is that the information content (as described by the entropy between messages) is roughly 8-12 bits per log, with log lengths that regularly exceed 500 characters. That is an information density of around .02 bits/byte, less than a tenth that of the TFTC log.

 

My own logs tend to be about 100 characters or so. Since each is unique, I will use the average information density of English, which is described to be between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character. Since many of my logs contain common information (albeit expressed differently) let's be conservative and say that I have an information content of 0.2 bits per character, or an information density approximately equal to that of the TFTC log. That still gives me about 20 bits of information per log.

 

Now let's assume that one of these cut-and-paste entries contains twice the amount of information that I would put into a log. If the logger finds 40 caches in a day, then the information content is about 1 bit per log, on a par with the TFTC log, but at a much lower density.

 

So who am I to say what is or is not meaningful? Somebody who knows math, that's who.

 

tumblr_ne2xgj19sh1rnhnqfo1_500.gif

 

*Shia surprise*

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You're assuming the "cut & paste" isn't expressing thanks to the cache owner.

Doesn't that go without saying? A cut&paste might have words saying "thanks", but obviously it wouldn't be a sincere expression of gratitude

 

Why not? Do the words one uses have to be original? How original do they have to be? Are we requiring that geocachers compose original works of literary brilliance for every cache found? How are we going to measure gratitude? (We now have an information-theoretic formula for "meaningful" posts thanks to fizzymagic ... anyone else want to come up with a formula for sincerity?)

 

As far as I'm concerned, the cache finder has already expressed thanks to me simply by taking the time to find the cache in the first place, and secondly to log their find so that I know it's still out there.

 

Geocaching has only three rules (and even they're debatable): trade even or better, sign the log, and log the find online. Everything else is extra.

 

 

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lucky me, this topic started with shawn staing what he liked... today i'm wearing Mea Culpa Mauve lipstick as i compose my confession to y'all... yuppers, i am guilty of those cut-n-paste logs with inclusions of my personalized adventure at your cache hide... in the future, probably will still try to correct my procrastination of timely logging, but will continue geocaching as it's FUN... and phooey to those who cannot accept my geo-quirky ways and logs - but that's the way i like it... B)

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You're assuming the "cut & paste" isn't expressing thanks to the cache owner.

Doesn't that go without saying? A cut&paste might have words saying "thanks", but obviously it wouldn't be a sincere expression of gratitude

Why not? Do the words one uses have to be original?

I don't care what words are used, but with cut&paste, the words, whatever they are, are not expressing anything except "ditto".

 

As far as I'm concerned, the cache finder has already expressed thanks to me simply by taking the time to find the cache in the first place, and secondly to log their find so that I know it's still out there.

I agree with that. My position is that cut&paste is a waste of space, not that it denies the cache was enjoyed.

 

Geocaching has only three rules (and even they're debatable): trade even or better, sign the log, and log the find online. Everything else is extra.

I don't claim appreciation is required, I'm merely pointing out that cut&paste words of appreciation convey only duplication.

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While it is tempting at times I do not cut and paste - even on a power trail or geo art. I figure that if the CO took the time and effort to place a container, obtain coordinates, submit the cache and then maintain it the least I can do not duplicate one of my other logs or do a TFTC. Of course, it takes a bit longer but I am tempted to notify anyone who simply posts a smiley emoticon or the equally lame TFTC to one of my caches that they will have their log deleted. (I haven't actually done this but it has crossed my mind.) I try not to place lame caches and I would be just as happy if I didn't earn lame logs.

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Precisely. Who are you to decide what is a "meaningful" or "sincere" log?

 

Well, since I am a physicist, I can do it via information theory. I would say that "meaningful" == "high information density"

 

TFTC conveys one bit of information in 4 bytes, or an information density of about .25 bits/byte.

 

A long log conveys more information, but cut-and-paste logs reduce that information by the number of times they are cut-and-pasted.

 

Probably the best indicator of the information content of a log would be the Kolmogorov complexity. A cacher in my area generates long logs that would be trivial to auto-generate on a computer; my estimate is that the information content (as described by the entropy between messages) is roughly 8-12 bits per log, with log lengths that regularly exceed 500 characters. That is an information density of around .02 bits/byte, less than a tenth that of the TFTC log.

 

My own logs tend to be about 100 characters or so. Since each is unique, I will use the average information density of English, which is described to be between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character. Since many of my logs contain common information (albeit expressed differently) let's be conservative and say that I have an information content of 0.2 bits per character, or an information density approximately equal to that of the TFTC log. That still gives me about 20 bits of information per log.

 

Now let's assume that one of these cut-and-paste entries contains twice the amount of information that I would put into a log. If the logger finds 40 caches in a day, then the information content is about 1 bit per log, on a par with the TFTC log, but at a much lower density.

 

So who am I to say what is or is not meaningful? Somebody who knows math, that's who.

 

Your points are intriguing, but I take issue with the idea that cut-and-paste is *always* bad.

 

Take an extreme example. Suppose you found two LPCs by different COs at opposite ends of a huge parking lot. During the 2 minute ride between caches, a meteorite crashed through the trunk lid of your car. That's a fantastic story that *must* be cut-&-pasted into both logs!

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Take an extreme example. Suppose you found two LPCs by different COs at opposite ends of a huge parking lot. During the 2 minute ride between caches, a meteorite crashed through the trunk lid of your car. That's a fantastic story that *must* be cut-&-pasted into both logs!

On the contrary, I think the before and after picture *must* be presented. At the very least, the descriptions would certainly need to differ by "after I left GZ" and "on my way to GZ", making cut&paste the wrong approach ipso facto.

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We've been following two different cachers who copy/paste the same LOOOONG log into every account of their find. I've come across probably 20+ caches with the same dad-gum log/description. Nothing unique.

My logs usually consist of something fun that we saw along the way, a non-spoiler about the cache or such, a thank you. I try to make 3-5 sentences, nothing burdensome to read - but original to each cache because each IS unique.

Cut and paste logs just rip out my soul.

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We've been following two different cachers who copy/paste the same LOOOONG log into every account of their find. I've come across probably 20+ caches with the same dad-gum log/description. Nothing unique.

My logs usually consist of something fun that we saw along the way, a non-spoiler about the cache or such, a thank you. I try to make 3-5 sentences, nothing burdensome to read - but original to each cache because each IS unique.

Cut and paste logs just rip out my soul.

 

If it's the two I see in some of the last few caches you've found, it looks like they have a general copy/paste log for their caching trip, plus a sentence or two at the end of each log that is specific to the particular cache. I don't see that their logs are egregiously long.

 

I'm not a fan of C&P logs either, but if there is at least something specific to each cache, I don't get heartburn over it.

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